Month: February 2012

Posted on by Dave Bonta

How to procreate

This entry is part 11 of 39 in the series Manual

 


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Repeat after me: reproduction is mandatory, but sex is dirty and sinful.

According to scripture, you can minimize contagion by keeping it in the family, or at least the tribe.

Hold hands when you walk, preferably ones that are still attached to bodies.

Check with local jurisdictions before deciding to go topless or baring an ankle.

Lower the newspaper between you slowly to increase your partner’s excitement.

Use the fire exit only for emergencies.

Boundaries are important in a relationship.

A zygote deserves every right of an American citizen, presuming it’s not in the country illegally.

Remember: oral sex never leads to pregnancy unless both partners speak the same language.

Don’t buy leather unless it’s been cured with brains.

Choose the lovers’ leap that’s right for you. Does the vegetation at the bottom match your blouse?

Holy spirit possession is the only truly safe sex.

Don’t just rock—roll! Make yourselves into a perfect cylinder of lust.

Angels, like snails, are hermaphroditic, which may account for their air of superiority.

Find new uses for mucous, O pushers of the envelope.

Know thyself, sure, but don’t stop there.

If you want the candle to stay erect, dribble hot wax into the holder.

Let your eyes do all the work, like a seed potato.

Use a 3-D printer to make plastic copies of yourself.

Don’t stop with circumcision. Remove the flesh around the ears, lose your eyelids, pull out your fingernails.

We shouldn’t presume to separate ourselves from the suffering world.

The mouth is born without teeth, just a tongue and a howl.

Nature is against nature.

Most birds have no penises, and most honeybees are non-reproductive females who act as sexual go-betweens for flowers. So much for the birds and the bees.

As for storks, they only live in the Old World. Their closest relatives in the New World are vultures.

Delivery of your order is by sea, and may take up to nine months.

Contents may expand in transit.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

How to dance

This entry is part 10 of 39 in the series Manual

 


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Don’t merely spin; unspool.

Replace all your bones with strong, flexible, environmentally conscious bamboo.

Forget how to walk.

You’re not trying to depart; you’re trying to arrive.

Apprentice yourself to a flat tire. Get down!

You are 60% water by weight—start acting like it.

Evaporate. Precipitate. Flow.

Apprentice yourself to a tectonic plate. Subduct!

Practice by following distant celestial bodies through a telescope without a tripod.

Whatever you’re doing, do it while holding an infant.

Dance about architecture, yes, but also about demolition.

Dance on your last legs, which have waited long enough.

Contrary to received wisdom, it actually takes three people to tango, unless you think you can do it without an accordion.

If you can’t dance, don’t worry—it’s not your revolution.

Do-si-do and promenade. Change partners.

Let your partner also change you.

Dervishes whirl because the beloved could be anywhere, anywhere!

Don’t be in such a hurry to finish.

*

Thanks to RR for a couple of the lines and much of the inspiration.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Landscape, with Threads of Conversation

This entry is part 52 of 73 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2011-12

 

Wistful as a note, or a scent, or a thin stroke sharp as a paper cut, that leaves a ruby mark on the hand trailing idly through green. Here we are again on the brink of meeting or parting. Your hand cradles the porcelain cup as you drink. You tell me how the afternoons pass, what the hour is when the grey clouds begin to turn pink, how the veils of Spanish moss look tinged with frost. I know a story has to change, something needs to shift. Deck parasols fold down against a spate of oncoming weather: a squall, perhaps. This is simply preparation. Sometimes the unexpected never comes. Yesterday, as we drove by the river in clear-edged sunshine, a sudden gust scattered the thin ribbons of remaining ice beneath the windshield wipers. And it’s true one must be generally careful to note the uses of description as analogy, or in science. But when I point out a wading bird, a perch, the slant of vines on the shed, most times I’m really just talking to you.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

How to lose

This entry is part 9 of 39 in the series Manual

 


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Learn to love silence and the taste of water.

Let birds nest in your best suit.

Live at home.

Change your mind often to prevent wear.

When called upon to speak, let words escape you: ululate.

Weep at weddings, dance at funerals, sleep-walk in parades.

Peg your moods to the weather.

Keep careful records of the shapes of clouds.

Burrow like a star-nosed mole into the task at hand: blindly, guided by an extinguished light.

Give yourself up like a river in flood.

Whatever you accomplish, make it look as if it happened on its own.

Form a committee for the reinvention of the wheel.

If you’re boring enough, even death may forget about you.

Erase your tracks with a worn-down broom.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Illusion

This entry is part 51 of 73 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2011-12

 

Even the eye can forget its tears,
the mouth its fondest lamentations.
Face pressed, attentive, to the glass,
the world’s a wheel, a shadow box,
a zoetrope with slits through which
we glimpse a strip of paper where
horses and birds are drawn. The wind
spins it around, or waves of air rising
warm from the lamp on which it rests:
cunningly, limbs leap from frame to
frame, crest obstacles, fluoresce.
But there’s no other word for this
wobbly apparatus of our discontent.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Manual: How to make videopoems, courtesy of Swoon

This entry is part 8 of 39 in the series Manual

 

Manual: How to wait from Swoon on Vimeo

Manual: How to walk from Swoon on Vimeo

If you follow my poetry video collection Moving Poems even a little, you’ve probably watched more than one videopoem by the Belgian video-artist and soundcreator Swoon — and I haven’t even posted all his work. Not only is he prolific and (obviously) fast-moving; he’s one of the most inventive and interesting artists working in the medium. I like the music he composes as well. So I was thrilled when he asked me, this past week, if I’d mind him making some videos for my new Manual series.

He’s also kindly provided an English translation of his blog post about the videos as well as a short bio, which I have tweaked just a little with his permission:

Poetry, words and dreams form an important basis for the work of Swoon. As a stranger in our midst he recycles “virtual” internet images, shoots his own, creates soundscapes and makes dreamlike, moving paintings out of it all — a dream made real out of vague bits. Swoon’s work has been selected for several festivals around the world. He’s an autodidact.

Swoon writes:

For “Manual” I wanted to create, first of all, a track that I could later adjust with each new episode.


Listen on SoundCloud

For images I wanted to do something with what Dave said on Facebook: “My biggest influences on the writing in this series, by the way, are the Serbian poets Vasko Popa and Novica Tadic. That’s the level of absurdism I’m trying to mine — a challenge for my somewhat too-logical mind.”

So I needed to go away from my usual way of setting up a project. I was not going to use layers; the feel of the films needed to have a slight touch of absurdism.

For “How to wait,” I wanted to film two bare feet standing/waiting. When I used a piece of bacon (lying around, waiting for lunch) to set focus and I looked at the test-footage, it struck me. This works. I love it when coincidences like this take a lead.

All I had to do was follow my trail of thoughts. Keep it simple. Film at home with what you can find in the kitchen.

For editing, I created three “storylines” of film for each text. Then I edited three different versions (backwards, …) of those three into a “nine-screen.”

*

Swoon adds that more videos will probably follow. How exciting! I think the bacon works in part because of the English expression “bring home the bacon” and related phrases such as “save one’s bacon” and “chew the fat.” According to the U.K. site The Phrase Finder, “bacon has been a slang term for one’s body, and by extension one’s livelihood or income, since the 17th century.” So to me as a viewer, the bacon in these videos seems to symbolize the generalized object of striving or attention. In any case, I think Swoon’s use of it is a good demonstration of the Zen dictum, “first thought, best thought.”

Listen to Swoon’s audio compositions on Soundcloud, watch his videos on Vimeo, follow his blog and visit his website.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Landscape, with Geese; and Later, Falling Snow

This entry is part 50 of 73 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2011-12

 

Two geese arc high overhead, calling to each other.
Against the slate sky and dull rooftops slick

with recent rain and now, the beginnings of snow,
their trumpet cries are garish— Like the streak

of cadmium yellow dividing the road down the middle:
the solid line meaning do not pass and the running

stitch meaning yes it is possible to cross
from one lane to the other with care as long

as there is no oncoming traffic. And when the snow
falls and falls in sheets later in the night,

everything will look the same: white sweep of road
leading to and away from the town, the buttery

glow of lights like small beacons in windows.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.